Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Create a new section of the Ruleset titled “Spells” with the following text:

The [[Spellbook]] page is ordained for Spell tracking.
In the Spellbook, there is a list of Spells. Each Spell has a name, a level which is a positive integer, a Casting Cost (CC) which is a positive integer, and zero or more modifiers. Spells in this list are always arranged in ascending order of level. The Spellbook also contains a list of each Adventurer and their known Spells.
Spells cannot have an Attack Power.
Spells with a Scavenging Power are not considered Tools. Such spells must be cast individually for each item whose roll an Adventurer wishes to increase, but they be cast after rolling.
At any time, an Adventurer in the Town may spend 2 AP to add a Spell to their known Spells if their Magic is equal to or greater than that Spell’s level.
At any time, an Adventurer may select one of their known Spells and spend a number of AP equal to its casting cost to Cast the spell, applying all effects described in the Spell’s modifiers. During a Hunt, an Adventurer may only Cast a Spell if that Spell’s modifiers specify that it can be Cast during a Hunt. Spells still cost AP to Cast even if used during a Hunt.

Add a new page to the Wiki called “Spellbook” with the following text:

== Known Spells by Adventurer ==
Allo:
derrick:
naught:
Oracular rufio:
pokes:
Trigon:
Zaphod:
== List of Spells ==
=== Brain Boost—Level 1—CC 1===
*If you gained Experience from Supporting one or more of another Adventurers’ successful Hunts since the last Respawn, increase your Experience by the amount you gained from Supporting one of those Hunts.

=== Ymehcla—Level 1—CC 2 ===
*Scavenging Power: X
*When you cast this spell, destroy any number of coins in your Inventory. X is equal to one tenth the amount of coins you destroyed, rounding down.
*May be cast during a Hunt

=== Siren Call—Level 2—CC 2 ===
*Establish the Pool as the set of all monster types from those in the List of Monsters whose Ecology matches your Location. Randomly choose a monster type from the Pool with the probability for each being that type’s frequency over the sum of all type’s frequency. Add a Monster of that type to your Location.

=== Sacrifice—Level 3—CC 0 ===
*Decrease your health by 6 and increase your AP by 2
*Cannot be used by an Adventurer with 0 AP

=== Enlarge—Level 3—CC 2 ===
* Set the hit points of a Monster in your Location to double the current value, rounding up. Denote this by adding “(HP: X)” after that Monster’s listing in your Location, where X is the new hit point value.

=== Minimize—Level 4—CC 3 ===
*Set the hit points of a Monster in your Location to half the current value, rounding up. Denote this by adding “(HP: X)” after that Monster’s listing in your Location, where X is the new hit point value.

To the bottom of the “Spawning” section of the Ruleset, add the following:

*Remove any parenthetical notations or modifiers from all monsters in the Wilds

If the name of any Spell outlined in this Proposal appears in ALL CAPS in a number of EVC’s equal to or greater than quorum, do not add that Spell to the List of Spells.

Making Magic a useful thing to have. And also, having spells would be fun.

Comments

Spells having scavenging power is confusing and weird, let’s not do that, especially since the one spell with scavenging power doesn’t even have a number there and it’s not like we’re going to make a whole lot of spells with different scavenging powers. Just write what the spell allows you to do in a bullet point and leave it at that.

Also, I think there’s some problem with spending AP during a hunt. The AP for the hunt is not removed until the end of the atomic action, which could cause some atomic action problems: if AP is less than 2 when we get to that step, remove 2 AP is now an illegal action (because AP is defined as non-negative). The ruleset states we must then redo the atomic action starting from the first illegal action. Since decreasing AP during a hunt is a legal action, that means it can’t be redone, and the atomic action can’t be restarted from any point prior to “decrease AP by 2”. We thus wind up stuck in an unresolvable state that probable needs a CFJ. I think before we start introducing ways to spend AP while hunting, we should change it so that the AP is spent at the beginning of the hunt, not at the end.

Actually, the atomic action rule doesn’t allow us to do anything else while in the midst of an atomic action: “and they may not take any other dynastic action, or achieve victory, until all such steps are complete.” That’s a problem, too.

On a non-serious note, Sacrifice should be called “Mystical Amphetamines”.

I think when we do get spells proper up and running we should make multiple proposals with small numbers of spells instead of one big lump and then say “vote for any you don’t want in the ruleset”.

Rather than having spells that help with scavenging, I’m more in favor of have tools that require Magic to use. That way we don’t have to worry about how to make spellcasting happen during a hunt, which is very illegal right now.

The rest of the spells are fine, I think, although some of them are minimally useful - instead of spending 2 AP to summon a monster, you could spend 2 AP to move somewhere where there is a monster, although I guess this would be useful if all the monsters had been killed; similarly, instead of banishing the monster you could move somewhere else, although with the Necromancer proposal that might be useful for hunting Necromancers.

Spells feel a little fiddly, to be honest. I’d prefer if they were just a type of item.

passing a bunch of spells all at once feels like too much for one proposal.

What is this?

BlogNomic is an online Nomic: a self-modifying game
where changing the rules is part of the game. Players make blog posts proposing additions or alterations to the ruleset, discussing
and casting votes in the
comments: if enough vote in favour, the rules are changed and play continues.

The game has been running since 2003 and resets every month or so. New players are always welcome and
can join in at any time.

"Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed."